OPINION

U.S.-born Mexican law professor John Ackerman. Photo: Wikipedia

By THÉRÈSE MARGOLIS

John Ackerman, an American law professor who decided to switch out his U.S. passport for a Mexican substitute and join the leftist bandwagon of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s (AMLO) own personal vision of pseudo-democracy, has just gotten a taste of what AMLO’s Brave New World of dictatorial socialism is really about.

After having been rejected two years ago from his ambition to become a councilor appraiser for the National Electoral Institute (INE) because he was not a native-born Mexican, and then being exposed for possible corruption by renowned Latinus journalist Carlos Loret de Mola, who ran an article enumerating nine questionable real estate properties belonging to him and his wife, then-Public Function Secretary Irma Eréndira Sandoval, Ackerman decided to try his hand at electoral politics over the July 30-31 regional polling for AMLO’s National Regeneration Movement (Morena) party.

But, alas, things did not go as planned for Ackerman during the election, which was marred with numerous incidences of alleged voter fraud, ballot-box burnings, payola schemes and even assaults with baseball bats (AMLO, a great fan of “America’s Favorite Pastime,” was proud of the process, calling it a “vote for democracy”).

After he apparently lost his bid for a seat in Morena’s National Congress for Mexico City’s 23rd District in Coyoacán to the party’s National Council president, Bertha Luján, Ackerman not only declared the electoral process in that district “corrupt,” but went so far at to accuse Morena leader Mario Delgado of leaking the results.

He also accused Luján of buying votes, while brandishing papers with her name on them that he claimed (with no evidence) were handed out by Morena militants to potential voters.

After someone pointed out that he seemed only concerned about the legality of one polling — that is, the one he lost — Ackerman later (24 hours later) amended his complaint to declare the entire weekend electoral process as irregular, which contradicted the president’s claims that the irregularities were “isolated incidences.”

Maybe Ackerman would be well advised to step back from Mexican politics and go back to teaching.